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Currency Pluralism and Economic Stability: The Swiss Experience

The Swiss complementary currency WIR is a classic example of monetary creation managed by economic agents lying outside the traditional banking system. When faced with tightening of credit or liquidity crises, Swiss small businesses increase their WIR transactions; when conditions improve, they return to the Swiss franc. This countercyclical effect illustrates the potential for parallel currencies to serve as tools for macroeconomic (...)
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Publications

Food Security, Finance and International Trade

How to Protect Developing Countries from Volatile Global Markets
In the years 2007 and 2008, many developing countries faced an economic tsunami as a global wave of food price increases swept over their national markets. The crisis pointed to an impasse in the hitherto dominant, free-market approach to agriculture and food trading. Drawing on this conclusion, this briefing presents four alternative ways to tackle the problem of controlling global food prices for the sake of poor developing countries’ food security: limiting the connections between the (...)
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Banking and Financial regulation
Events

The Veblen Institute supports Finance Watch

Last June, European elected officials in charge of regulating financial markets and banks launched a call to civil society to organize the creation of a non-governmental organization capable of developing a counter-expertise on activities carried out on financial markets by the major operators (banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, etc ...). This call has been given the name Finance Watch. Its objective is to end the imbalance between the force of the financial industry and the absence (...)
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